Blockchain Identity Management company Sphre plans to launch an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) for its XID token on April 19, 2017 to raise $3.8 million to build out their new consumer product called Air and introduce it to the market. The XID pre-sale is now live, offering a discount to participants. More information is available here.

“We built Air based on the need for a unified and highly secure approach, achieving the goal of bringing control and privacy back to each individual and entity,” said Daren Seymour, CEO of Sphre. “Our company is focused on a single mission: to use Blockchain technologies to solve urgent identity management problems for both the enterprise and the consumer.”

Air, is a secure, lightweight system for digital identity and individual microeconomic engagement based on Blockchain infrastructure. Air’s API will allow third-party organizations and enterprises to integrate support for Air into their existing and new systems, while the mobile application secures and maintains each individual’s private key. Users also have the ability to store their key within a digital vault of their choice, such as a bank. The Hyperledger Chaincode (smart contract) forms the basis of the given identity, and contains program logic that will allow an individual to recover their identity if their mobile device is lost.

Currently, the adoption of digital identity systems is fragmented by numerous organizations and enterprises, delivering a confusing user experience via the necessity of maintaining multiple registrations and passwords. As the world conducts more and more interactions and transactions online, Air aims to reduce friction and improve security as a user-friendly digital identity solution for the consumer and the enterprise. The technology of Air is composed of smart contracts, Application Programming Interface (API), and a mobile application for personal use, all of which combine to present a powerful digital identity management solution of the future.

Air-based digital identities will take on a variety of forms, from the individual to the enterprise, all of which are fully owned and controlled by the creator and do not rely on a centralized entity or third party for validation. Due to its Blockchain-based implementation, each user’s assets such as cryptocurrencies are intrinsically supported. At its core, an Air-based digital identity enables the user to digitally verify an action or transaction, facilitating a variety of potential use cases, as outlined in the Air whitepaper.

Sphre plans to launch a crowdsale for its XID token on April 19, 2017 to raise $3.8 million to build out the Air consumer product and introduce it to the market.

SPHRE is a new kind of information technology organization, driving radical and positive change for individual and the enterprise identity management. The world is undergoing a rapid transformation, and SPHRE aims to fully engage and embrace the change by influencing the economics that power the future. For more information, please visit www.sphre.co.

Founder, Publisher and Editor in Chief of industry leading online publication, Blockchain News and co-founder and director at Blockchain Partners in London/Amsterdam/NYC. Kastelein is also an advisor with a number Blockchain startups doing ICOs including Humaniq.co where hs is interim CMO, DECENT.ch, Inchain, Chronobank, eGaas and others. He is regarded as one of the top journalists by the Blockchain and fintech communities – as is evident by his entry in the Top 150 Fintech journalists online and in the top 10 of the Blockchain Top 100 List.

As a prominent keynote presenter, he has spoken on Blockchain at events in Gdansk, Amsterdam, Minsk, Dubai, Antwerp, Eindhoven, Bucharest, Nairobi, Tel Aviv, Manchester, Brussels, Barcelona etc, where he helped spread the cause for Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency and, consequently, has built a notable network in the scene.

He’s also a director of a Dutch foundation called The Hackitarians and has run innovation events in London, San Francisco, Berlin, Amsterdam and other cities around the world on topics such Blockchain, Health, Energy, Internet of Things, AI etc.

In 2013, the European Commission appointed him as an expert for overseeing financing for emerging startups as a part of the European Commission’s 90 billion euro Horizon 2020 project, created in Brussels to promote innovation as a driving force of job creation and business ventures across Europe. He has also worked as an external expert for Innovate UK since 2012, judging startups for the UK government.